I’m jaded, I’m pooped, I’m pissed, and I’m depressed.
2007 was long. 2007 was REALLY long. In a 12 month period, I planned (well, helped plan) a wedding, got married, sold a condo, said goodbye to all my friends, moved cross country, completely changed my work patterns and schedule (nothing compared to what Tracee had to go through at work) and began househunting. I was resigned to it taking longer than Tracee thought – she fully expected to be home by Christmas. She was down about it, but I stayed cheerful, positive, and confident. Not any more.
So we discussed the houses below. We dimissed the Bret Harte house, deciding that we wanted to live in Fairfax. So we took Jeff and Liz to the place we liked but had doubts about, to get their input. They’re a new family, new baby, probably where we’ll be in a few years, so we wanted to be sure that we wouldn’t be regretting our purchase. And they echoed what we were thinking, but didn’t want to admit. No. The bedrooms were too small. Too many stairs. Precarious access. Not enough storage. So onward we went.
Today John sent word of another house in Fairfax. A 3br/1.5 bath, with an extra 1 br/1ba 500sf guest cottage, in a big secluded private yard, with private waterfall.
Check it:
Less than 3/4 of a mile to downtown Fairfax. Sold 2 years ago for well over a million, now available for $850k or so. John provided the pictures – it went from curiousity to lust. Ok, let’s check it out.
We drove out to see it, and John was already there, and had checked it out. It was a foreclosure fixer, he announced. The house had been reposessed in the summer, and had sat vacant since. Plants in gardens had withered and died, which were now overrun with weeds. Everything needed to be cleaned and painted. Floors needed to be resurfaced. But as we looked, the house grew on me. More and more. They were all things that were big enough to allow us to put our own touches on the house, but not major enough to put us off – aside from the kitchen, it was all just a couple of weekends of sweat that we could do ourselves. We walked down to the cottage, walking through the garden, passing the waterfall that emptied into a stream, imagining that’d be my commute, as opposed to sitting in a crappy bedroom with stompy bitch upstairs all the damn time. The cottage was fantastic, complete with it’s own little bathroom, woodburning fireplace, and even a wee kitchen. But the roof was toast, and I was concerned, but John less so – $10k would fix the roof and carry out any repairs. And he seemed confident we could slice $75-100k off the asking price.
John, phone the agents, find out what you can, I think we’ve finally found a winner.
On the drive home, we were talking about what we wanted to do in order, getting more excited all the time. “Let’s redo the kitchen while we’re at it. I saw an article in Dwell with a similar space that looked good!” “I think we should replace the parquet floors downstairs, but I love the hardwood upstairs!” “I have so many ideas of what we could do to that cottage!” “I can picture being here for a LONG time!”
Then we got the email from John a few hours later. The cottage had been condemned because it was built without permits, too close to the creek. There was evidence of shady dealings in the pricing of the house, probably due to serious code violations. And all of this was ahead of finding out what sort of potential issues that the neglect caused. A situation he said he didn’t want to get involved with, and neither should we. He finished with the words “This is not for you.”
I’m extremely bummed. Of all the houses (we calculated this was the 31st we’ve walked through over the months) this was the first I saw that I actually said “Yes. Yes, yes, yes. This is it!” The other couple of places we’ve pursued have been more with the mentality of “Well, I guess it’d do.” This one was the one that made me think “Holy crap, it’s an ideal fit. The house is groovy, the price is potentially right, the landscape kicks ass, it’s exactly where we want to be, and once it’s fixed up, that guest cottage is PERFECT for my studio.” I now feel as deflated as Tracee did when we didn’t get Belle, and 10 times as sick and tired of househunting as I’ve been. What optimism and positivity I’ve had up until now has evaporated, and I’m convinced we’ll be stuck in this Godforsaken apartment with our shitbag upstairs neighbors for God knows how long. We’ve decided to focus our attention on a town where maybe one house comes on the market each month, and when it does it’s usually a teeny two bedroom you can’t swing a cat in.
Damn.
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Now playing: Johnny Cash – Folsom Prison Blues
via FoxyTunes
